Making Job Search Easier by Finding the Great Companies First

If you have been following any major trends you’ll know that Elon Musk is in route to rule the world. Well, that may be an exaggeration, perhaps at least Mars, but on a Earth like note, last year he proposed an idea of a transportation method so futuristic that only someone crazy or super motivated would contemplate it. It turns out someone may be both and that organization goes by the name Formation 8. So what is this futuristic idea and who is Formation 8? Read on! Formation 8 is an investment firm founded by Joe Lonsdale, Brian Koo and Jim Kim, back in 2011. So far they’ve done a superior job of picking some major money generating enterprises with its first fund. They just so happen to include RelateIQ, which Salesforce bought for $390 million, and Oculus, which Facebook bought for $2 billion last year. When they started they had eight employees at launch, and now close to 30 people wander about the office give or take. Let’s not forget the investments made in companies Wish, Radius, LearnSprout, Leeo, and Yello Mobile. Formation 8 is looking for “industry-transforming companies” no matter what their situation is. So in order to…

Adtech startups in the pre-IPO phase are proving to be a hot commodity among investors, with startups like Rubicon Project showing healthy stock increases from day one. As the adtech sector grows, so does interest from investors. Finding the next big thing in terms of pre-IPO adtech startups involves a set of metrics which balance revenues and the number of employees against investor funding and reputation, while also determining which companies are ripe for IPO entrance. Recognizable Names in Adtech Startups Pinterest, one of the Big Three in social media is launching its Ads API, which their immediate peers Facebook and Twitter both did in the months leading up to their IPOs. Currently, Pinterest is responsible for up to one quarter of all incoming traffic to e-commerce and online retailers’ sites. Other likely candidates include Flurry, and InMobi, which is among the largest non-public mobile ad businesses in the world. With an estimated revenue of $372 million, roughly 900 employees and a total venture funding of $216 million, InMobi is also less likely to be profitable than some of the hot pre-IPO adtech startups for 2014. Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf is openly discussing an IPO, telling Business Insider, “I…

Bark & Co acquired $15 million in Series B funding and is showing the world just how powerful dogs can be in the tech world. Driven largely by the success of the company’s BarkBox, a subscription service which delivers dog treats to the homes of members, Bark & Co. has been cash-flow positive since the fourth quarter of 2013. An inside round consisting of Vast Ventures, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Slow Ventures, Daher Capital, CAA, Lerer Ventures, RRE, BoxGroup and Resolute.vc raised $10 million for the dog-driven company, while another five was financed from City National Bank. Attracting Pet Owners The Barkbox business model is built around e-commerce and online subscription plans, offering users a box of dog treats and toys each month whose contents are dependent upon the size of the dog and the subscription tier of the user. Subscriber retention is well over 90%, and 75% of users will commit to a longer-term plan after joining. Bark & Co. is also uniquely placed to cash in on rising fears among pet owners of dog treats sourced from Chinese manufacturers, as highly-publicized pet deaths attributed to Chinese treats gain more media attention. BarkBox treats and chews are sourced from areas…

They’re one of Apple’s primary partners, appearing at keynotes for new Apple product launches. They are slated to engage in 400,000 hours of streaming live video in 2014, and revenues for the year are estimated at $800 million. By 2016, their revenue projections will hit $1 billion. They’re among the most popular choices for content infrastructure, and one of the biggest media companies in the country. This company isn’t known as a media giant; they’re far more recognizable in other circles, though. One of the biggest media companies in the industry right now is actually MLB Advanced Media, the tech company of Major League Baseball. How Major League Baseball Became a Media Industry Giant With their innovative approach to media, MLB’s tech division is now considered more of a media company than a baseball organization. MLB Advanced Media began with MLB.com, and was funded through an agreement with the thirty baseball clubs which comprised of $1 million each year over a four-year span. The estimated cost was $120 million, but MLB Advanced Media began turning a profit three years later. After investing less than $75 million, investors started to see ROI, and now those thirty owners are earning annual…

Business development managers working to drive online advertising sales for their digital agencies’ clients will like Joe Marchese: he’s at war with an industry that too often allows genuinely creative efforts in digital advertising to get buried in a tsunami of worthless impressions. And his LA-based company, interactive ad startup True[X], has just bagged a further $6 million in Series D to stuff into its war chest. The war on worthless impressions Marchese says the money is an extension of the Series D it raised back in 2011 (in those days, it was called “SocialVibe”); existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, Pinnacle Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Jafco Ventures stumped up. The extra cash, Marchese confirmed, will be ploughed into helping True[X] follow its aims more aggressively. But what, the inquiring business development manager will be asking, do those aims consist of? Marchese wants to attract more big-name, quality publishers to the startup’s ad platform, moving the industry away from shady practices that he likens to Wall Street’s operations in the subprime crisis of 2008. If that’s whetted our business development manager’s curiosity even further, here’s Marchese’s argument: the financial products market rewarded the wrong things. It mass-marketed housing loans that anyone…